PDF: Roundtable Publicity Release.

McKinleyville, CA – October 5, 2004

On September 23-24, industry leaders and major academic customers of calendaring and scheduling products focused on the path to interoperability in a second event sponsored by the emerging Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium. Hosted by Oracle Corporation in Montreal, “A Roundtable Discussion on the Future of Interoperable Calendaring and Scheduling” participants included Duke University, IBM Lotus Software, Isamet, The Mozilla Foundation, Novell, Oracle, the Open Source Applications Foundation, Stata Labs, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Washington, and Yahoo. It was a follow-up to a Consortium-sponsored testing event at the University of California, Berkeley on July 29-30.

“A lack of interoperable calendaring and scheduling products is a major productivity barrier,” said Dave Thewlis, executive director of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium. “It can lead to serious miscommunications, failed activities, and a huge waste of time.”

By involving both the vendors and the user community, participants intended the Roundtable to contribute to measurable progress toward achieving interoperable calendaring and scheduling. Products of the Roundtable include statements of common vision and shared goals, a charter for the Consortium, and the kernel of an action plan.

"A primary goal of the consortium is to further the design and implementation of calendaring and scheduling standards,” said Marten den Haring, director, Product Management, Oracle Collaboration Suite Calendar. “The Roundtable’s outcome is the blueprint for the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium, and Oracle is proud to be one of the organizations involved with this effort, which will create initiatives that benefit collaboration.”

Discussions at the event covered topics such as the applicability of existing forums; co-existence and harmonization with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), customer and user involvement with use cases, requirements setting and directions; and interoperability testing and conformance.

Media Contact
Maryann Karinch
970-577-8500
maryann@karinch.com

Consortium Contact
Dave Thewlis
707-840-9391
dave.thewlis@calconnect.org